


the birds have all flown away

by Fialleril



Category: Norse Mythology
Genre: Double Drabble, Exile, F/M, Family, Gen, POV Female Character, Separations, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-03
Updated: 2011-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 23:46:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fialleril/pseuds/Fialleril
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They call Nerthus a widow now, although her husband still lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the birds have all flown away

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to [Numbered Among the Aesir](http://archiveofourown.org/works/212868). It probably helps to read that one first.

Nerthus is called a widow now, although her husband still lives. She watches the sea, sometimes, and thinks of him, far away and lost to her more surely than any dead man. She has heard that Njord is called one of the most eligible men in Asgard. No doubt they will marry him soon.

A shadow crosses her face at the thought. She remembers far off days spent laughing in bed, and days further still spent chasing one another through the ripe barley, playing at adventure until their mother came to collect them for sleep. She misses her husband, and her brother perhaps more so. But she does not allow herself sorrow.

She keeps Freyja’s necklace, the one she left behind when she went to teach _seid_ to the Aesir. She doesn’t wear it, but she takes it out sometimes and traces her fingers lightly over the glass beads. It’s an old necklace, a child’s necklace. She remembers giving it to her daughter, and Freyja’s childish glee – now she could look like Mother. Nerthus wonders how her daughter looks now.

She fingers the necklace and smiles her soft widow’s smile.

Outside, a falcon banks steeply and lands at her doorstep.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Freyr and Freyja's mother is never named in the myths. Nerthus is the name of a Germanic goddess recorded by Tacitus, and the name is linguistically related to Njord, making it a reasonable guess for a name in a Vanir brother-sister pair. Modern pagans usually take Nerthus as the name of Freyja and Freyr's mother.
> 
> 2\. _Seid_ is a particular form of women's magic at which Freyja was an expert.


End file.
